Wisconsin Battle Flags of the Civil War

The Wisconsin Veterans Museum in Madison has 180 flags from the Civil War. Meg Jones has a nice story about them in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Since the battle flags were used to signal the location of specific groups of soldiers, the men holding those flags were primary targets for the other side:

If a man wanted to live, he didn't carry his Civil War unit's flag onto battlefields...

Every color bearer serving in the Iron Brigade, which included the 2nd, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Infantry, at the Battle of Gettysburg was killed or wounded.

As one flag bearer went down, another would take up the flag, until he, too, was shot too badly to hold on. And then another would take his place.

I've seen the two flag poles at the museum which were carried by the men of the Iron Brigade at the Battle of the Corn Field. They look like they were chewed by rats.

More here.